Cite as: 530 U. S. 466 (2000)
O'Connor, J., dissenting
Although we characterized the factual determination under New York law as one going to the mitigation of culpability, id., at 206, as opposed to the aggravation of the punishment, it is difficult to understand why the rule adopted by the Court in today's case (or the broader rule advocated by Justice Thomas) would not require the overruling of Patterson. Unless the Court is willing to defer to a legislature's formal definition of the elements of an offense, it is clear that the fact that Patterson did not act under the influence of extreme emotional disturbance, in substance, "increase[d] the penalty for [his] crime beyond the prescribed statutory maximum" for first-degree manslaughter. Ante, at 490. Nonetheless, we held that New York's requirement that the defendant, rather than the State, bear the burden of proof on this factual determination comported with the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause. Patterson, 432 U. S., at 205-211, 216; see also id., at 204-205 (reaffirming Leland v. Oregon, 343 U. S. 790 (1952), which upheld against due process challenge Oregon's requirement that the defendant, rather than the State, bear the burden on factual determination of defendant's insanity).
Patterson is important because it plainly refutes the Court's expansive reading of Mullaney. Indeed, the defendant in Patterson characterized Mullaney exactly as the Court has today and we rejected that interpretation:
"Mullaney's holding, it is argued, is that the State may not permit the blameworthiness of an act or the severity of punishment authorized for its commission to depend on the presence or absence of an identified fact without assuming the burden of proving the presence or absence of that fact, as the case may be, beyond a reasonable doubt. In our view, the Mullaney holding should not be so broadly read." Patterson, supra, at 214-215 (emphasis added) (footnote omitted).
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